Developing faith through Montessori

Snug as a waistcoat, the tiny room nevertheless accommodates the six children splayed in a crescent of toddler chairs. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, their teacher, the Rev. Joyce Scherer-Hoock, launches into the day's lesson, the parable of the Good Shepherd. The children, most of them 4 years old, will get a hands-on introduction to the biblical story.

Not that they will herd sheep through the vestry. But Peabody's St. Paul's Episcopal Church runs a Montessori Sunday school, following the same educational philosophy as that of the secular schools founded by early 20th-century educator Maria Montessori.

Scherer-Hoock not only tells the children the story, but she also demonstrates it, manipulating wooden figurines: the Good Shepherd with a lamb slung over his shoulder, sheep figures, and a livestock pen made of string.

After the lesson, the children engage in individual activities. A moon-faced boy under a cap of red hair, wearing a Tom Brady Patriots jersey, diligently uses tweezers to remove colored beads from a cup and put them into plastic trays. To the obvious question -- what could this possibly have to do with Jesus or the Good Shepherd -- Scherer-Hoock says, "Concentration is the first step of prayer."

As the children learn to focus, they'll move on to pouring water rather than beads and learn how to serve bread -- how, in other words, to prepare the altar table.

These activities will be familiar to those with children in Montessori schools, which downplay or supplement traditional, teacher-led lectures in favor of individual, self-directed learning. For the youngest children, that means using their senses in handling materials.

"A child will be attracted to what they need, both intellectually and spiritually," says Scherer-Hoock. The name of St. Paul's Montessori curriculum, The Catechesis of the Good Shepherd , is apt "because young children are sensitive to protection."

She believes that teaching religion especially fits the Montessori approach. "The method needs to fit the message. When you are teaching that God is love . . . but you do it by giving tests that are humiliating, that don't honor who people are . . . your method is not fitting your message."

Catherine Maresca, founder of a Catholic Montessori school in Maryland who trains teachers around the country in how to use the Good Shepherd curriculum, agrees. "Faith is such a personal thing that it's better if the teacher gets out of the way of it," she said.

Scherer-Hoock is familiar with more traditional teaching methods. Raised Presbyterian in the 1960s, she memorized the catechism in Sunday school. She also recalls St. Paul parents describing the traditional Sunday school before she arrived three years ago, "a dispirited kind of broken-down operation," she said. "One of the women here who had taught Sunday school for many years said the kids hated it. It's boring."

Moreover, students who are taught the traditional way often don't remember the lessons.

Yet, that was standard operating procedure in the late 1890s when Montessori, a doctor who worked with children with learning disabilities, noticed them playing with crumbs on the floor without eating them, says Scherer-Hoock. Montessori realized that children learned best by using all their senses and manipulating things, rather than having teachers shovel information at them.

Montessori was a devout Catholic, says Maresca. But as her method spread, it became separated from her religious work, so that many secular Montessori teachers today are unaware of the latter. Not so religious teachers: Churches in the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts run about 165 Sunday schools, of which roughly half use Montessori-based curriculums, says Amy Cook, coordinator of the diocese's resource center.

That might suggest, Scherer-Hoock's enthusiasm notwithstanding, that some churches prefer a more traditional curriculum. "When it works well," Cook says of the Montessori approach, "you can't buy another curriculum that's better. . . . But some of our churches aren't there yet."

She recalls working at one church in which the catechism instructors were traditionally trained teachers. In such an environment, Cook says, "Trying to introduce a different method wouldn't have worked at that time."

Following the adage that you should practice what you preach, Scherer-Hoock used Montessori methods in raising her youngest daughter. From hanging her daughter's coats at a level the child could reach and learn to put them on herself, to deploying child-sized furniture, Scherer-Hoock encouraged independence. "A 2- or a 3-year-old," she says, "can begin to learn how to clear their own table, if they're fed at a table that's their size."

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